Book Review: “JAZZ BABY” by BEEM WEEKS.

BOOK REVIEW: “JAZZ BABY” By BEEM WEEKS.

BEEM WEEKS

Beem Weeks is the author of short stories, poems, essays, and novels. Among his literary influences he counts Daniel Woodrell, Barbara Kingsolver, and Stephen Geez. A pop-culture trivia buff, Beem’s passions include indie films, loud music, and a well-told story. He has also penned a collection of short stories entitled Slivers of Life.

BLURB

While all of Mississippi bakes in the scorching summer of 1925, sudden orphanhood wraps its icy embrace around Emily Ann “Baby” Teegarten, a pretty young teen.

Taken in by an aunt bent on ridding herself of this unexpected burden, Baby Teegarten plots her escape using the only means at her disposal: a voice that brings church ladies to righteous tears, and makes both angels and devils take notice. “I’m going to New York City to sing jazz,” she brags to anybody who’ll listen. But the Big Apple–well, it’s an awful long way from that dry patch of earth she’d always called home.

So when the smoky stages of New Orleans speakeasies give a whistle, offering all sorts of shortcuts, Emily Ann soon learns it’s the whorehouses and opium dens that can sidetrack a girl and dim a spotlight…and knowing the wrong people can snuff it out.

Jazz Baby just wants to sing–not fight to stay alive.

MY BOOK REVIEW: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A beautifully written and perfectly captured slice of time.

What happens when an author weaves a timeline with such devotion to detail that the reader can smell, hear, taste and feel the ambience? Jazz Baby is what happens. Author Beem Weeks seduces the reader with the perfection of both the dialogue and the dawning of an age that will live on as long as memory exists.

His characterization of Baby Teegarten is utterly perfect, her determination to succeed in a sleaze filled world is based on her absolute certainty that she has a voice that will move people, a voice that will transform the darkest of nights into glistening, gleaming candles of perfection.

She brazens her way through a life where there will always be those ready to take advantage of her … her understanding of the passions that drive others she transfers into song.

This author hasn’t simply written a novel set in a certain time-frame, he has taken the hopes, dreams and fears of a generation facing great change and transformed all of it into a magical creation of flowing words and scented phrases, set in a dark rich fabric. I am eager now to read much more from this author’s talented pen. Bravo.

Thank you, Beem! This book helped me travel beyond the limitations of my surroundings. You have a rare talent, and I’m so looking forward to reading ‘Slivers of Life’ which is coming up soon on my TBR list.